So say we all!
[CH]
Zombiehammer Slingshot with Skull Ejector [Video]
After reviewing the second season of “The Walking Dead”, the team at The Slingshot Channel realized that firearms are weapons of last resort in a Zombie outbreak. Gunshots are just too loud, veritable dinner bells for the Undead.
A powerful slingshot is a very good choice, as earlier tests clearly proved. But then again, a close quarter weapon may even be nore important – most of the Zombie killings in the show have been done with clubs, rocks, machetes, even with a screwdriver.
So a combo weapon is our answer to the challenge. A 15cm steel spike, sharp and hardened, in combination with a blunt “smasher” side made from a large steel ball, plus a slingshot on the handle side!
A spike is the easiest way to destroy a Zombie brain. But what if it gets stuck, and more ghouls are approaching? Therefore, a skull ejector lever has been added. A simple pull, and the spike comes free, ready to make the next “dead thing deader”.
ZOMG Cubelets! [Video]
Cubelets are magnetic blocks that can be snapped together to make an endless variety of robots with no programming and no wires. You can build robots that drive around on a tabletop, respond to light, sound, and temperature, and have surprisingly lifelike behavior. But instead of programming that behavior, you snap the cubelets together and watch the behavior emerge like with a flock of birds or a swarm of bees.
Each cubelet in the kit has different equipment on board and a different default behavior. There are Sense Blocks that act like our eyes and ears, Action blocks, and Think blocks. Just like with people, the senses are the inputs to the system.
Unfortunately, at $160 for the first 6-piece kit, these are a little pricey, even though I’m sure they’re a lot of fun to play with.
[Cubelets]
Twaggies on GoComics
One of our favorite Web comics, Twaggies, has joined the pages of GoComics, the daily syndicate that handles Calvin & Hobbes, Peanuts and Garfield, to name just a few. You can now sign up for a daily Twaggie delivered to your inbox each morning via GoComics! Check it out. And follow @Twaggies on Twitter. Maybe they’ll turn YOUR tweet into a cartoon next.
Google Slaps Own Wrists
Google has discovered a company was breaking its rules by using paid ads to push itself up the search rankings. It’s now punished that company by manually penalizing it so that it appears much lower down. Amazingly that company was Google itself.
The search giant had hired an online marketing company, Essence Digital, to use video ads to promote the Chrome browser. Essence Digital then used another firm, Unruly Media, to place the ads. Among its tactics, Unruly paid bloggers to include the ad in posts that were clearly labeled as sponsored by Chrome.
All that was fine by Google’s rules, but the problem came when one of these bloggers decided to include a direct link to the download page for Chrome within text accompanying the video ad. That meant the Chrome page was getting an additional inbound link (boosting its “score” on Google’s PageRank system) that only came about because of a payment, which breaches Google’s rules.
After sites including SEOBOOK highlighted the breach, Google investigated the issue. It didn’t find any problems with the video ads themselves, but did confirm the post linking to Chrome was a violation. Following the rules it would apply to any other company, it’s taken two steps as a result:
- the page with the blog post itself has now been ranked as untrustworthy for Google search purposes, which removes the tiny boost to the Chrome ranking it produced;
- the Chrome site has been manually demoted in the rankings for 60 days, after which its managers will have to formally request it be re-ranked.
The Chrome site has not been removed from the rankings altogether. Instead its PageRank value has been reduced, which effectively acts as a handicap to its “natural” ranking. The penalty has already had an effect: for terms such as “chrome”, “google chrome” and “browser” the site is already well outside the top 50 results for many users, though the precise effects will continue to vary from user to user.
There’s also nothing to stop Google giving itself prime position in the sponsored results that appear at the top of the page, which appears to be the case for some of the affected terms.
Geek vs. Nerd: The Infographic
A friend of mine just sent me this infographic with Geeks are Sexy in mind… and while most of it gives us the facts, I think it puts a little too much emphasis on geeks being hipsters, which I don’t think is all that true. So what do you guys think? Do you agree the the “facts” listed below? And according to the infographic, are you a geek or a nerd?
From: MastersInIt.org
Return of the Farting Jedi (who Farts) [Video]
Interesting: 60-Second Adventures in Thought [Video]
Six 60-second animations (combined) explaining six famous thought experiments.